Peanut Butter Cookie Pins

If you read yesterday's post, you'll see that I was craving something sweet. I did end up continuing my experimental night in the kitchen with a peanut butter cookie recipe.

The original pin picture. 

This specific peanut butter cookie recipe came from Pinterest, where many of us probably spend hours oohing and aahing over drool-worthy pictures of everything under the sun, including food. Now, I don't know about you, but I've heard and seen a few horror stories of hoaxes, lies and just plain bad food coming from those boards. (As a side note, if you haven't checked out the Pinstrosity blog yet, it is an ego boost and support group for those of us that aren't quite as handy with the mixer or tool gun as well as a place to double check if you pin will actually work).

Anyways, this was touted as a "healthy" peanut butter cookie recipe, with ONLY 36 CALORIES PER COOKIE! (yes, it was written like that. -grin-) Even better, it only used four ingredients: peanut butter, sugar or honey, egg, and vanilla. And when I googled it, another blogger seemed to have tried it and had good results. Bingo!

Now, just out of curiosity, I did the math on the calories. These cookies are definitely not 36 calories per cookie. They use a cup of peanut butter and a cup of sugar or honey; even disregarding the egg and vanilla, they end up being more like 134 calories a cookie. Higher if you use a sugary peanut butter, but then you probably can reduce the amount of sugar that you add in to compensate.

Still, however sketchy they were, my hunger (literally and metaphorical) for something sugary propelled me onward. The dough seemed a little wet, but sometimes that happens (and I hand't quite had enough peanut butter, but you'd think that would make them dryer, if anything else. That is also why they don't have the normal cross-hatch pattern; the fork was sticking! You can probably sprinkle them with a little sugar to keep this from happening. I popped them into the oven, and they came out just like peanut butter cookies. I was mildly surprised.

And they were delicious. As a note the next day, they are still a little more gooey than normal peanut butter cookies. It could be because I made them a little bigger, and didn't quite cook them enough (the picture shows 18 cookies, but we all know not to trust pictures).

Conclusion: Not 36 calories as touted on Pinterest, but they really are quick and easy. Four ingredients, 10 minutes in the oven. Plus, they are gluten-free and still taste like normal peanut butter cookies, which is always a bonus. Makes appx. 12 cookies normal-sized cookies, which is a little bit less than I expected for a cup of peanut butter. Vegans can replace the egg with oil. 

The light in my kitchen is awful. And I might have somehow ingested a cookie before remembering to pull out my camera.

4-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies:

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup sugar or honey

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Mix peanut butter and sugar/honey together, add in egg and vanilla. Scoop onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, silpat, etc. (or you can probably grease it). Use fork to make classic peanut butter cookie cross-hatching. Bake 10-12 minutes. Makes a dozen cookies. You're done and have delicious cookies!